Returning to the place of destruction, looking down from high above, the ground was scarred beyond recognition. It was already a crater, a nest for these bastards, but now it was the ground zero of an apocalyptic explosion. From my estimations, it looked worse than any nuclear explosion in my world, mainly because most of those were airburst bombs. I couldn’t tell if the mist-like fog above the crater was actually just that: mist. Or what I feared it was...

Anyway, expecting the worst and with my order to be cautious, we neared our destination slowly, the Camelot descending with painstaking slowness. Every time we dropped ten meters, I ordered a stop and then a full scan. Sometimes, thanks to the intense sunlight and the occasional gust of wind, the mist dispersed, and we could see a blackened and molten hole that was surrounded by ash and warped earth coated with molten raw materials that were hidden underground, boiled until they came to the surface. Damn… Maybe we created this world’s equivalent of a nuclear fallout, only in a magic-like form.

“Captain Kustov,” I called, standing just behind the helm, watching the projection. “Status of our latest scans?”

“Not good,” Kustov turned to glance back at me, shaking his head. “The lower we go, the weirder the readings are... we’re getting an extreme interference emanating from down below.”

“So it is as I feared…” I shrugged, biting my lips, “You can call this radiation.”

“Yes… Radiation.” He nodded, tasting the word. “It is apt, my Sovereign. From what we can tell, the CC particles in the air,” he continued, and his report made my gut clench. “They’re distorting the readings. We can pick up the crater, and we can see structural changes, but every attempt to identify lingering magical signatures returns corrupted readings like a scrambled formation. I am afraid that most of the ship’s spells won’t function perfectly…. And if we get too low, we may lose what keeps us afloat. I have to suggest, my Sovereign, that we do not go lower. Not until we wholly understand its effects!”

“Yes, I agree,” I muttered to myself. “Stop the descent for now and try to compensate for the interference.”

“Sovereign,” a technician called out from another terminal in the left-hand cluster. “We have found a somewhat lower-density spot, where the mist is thin, and we could… call it a clean spot. We can try and land our troops there, at least until the weather shifts again.”

“How are the mechs?” I asked, nodding, considering if we should even send Father and Corinne down… I didn’t want to risk the Lion and the Shadow.

“They are ready,” Kustov reported. “Both are prepped to the best of our abilities. We can deploy them from our current altitude any time you wish.”

“Give me a moment,” I muttered, heading back to my seat and connecting my radio to the mech dangling below the Camelot. “I guess you read the situation already?”

“Yeah, we did.” Dad’s voice came back, perfectly calm and even somewhat excited, with the enthusiasm of a teenager on a joyride. Somewhat… I could relate. “You nervous?” he asked, chuckling.

“More about the readings than the height of the drop,” I admitted while I turned toward the projection, where the two mechs were visible below us, hanging beneath the Camelot. Their weight may have pulled at the ship, but the anti-gravity spells kept everything stable… but if Kustov is right and that also gets interfered with, it may cause us to tilt and find it harder to maneuver.

“We can handle it,” Kalash said, interrupting my thoughts. “Have trust in us, son.”

The other mech, Shadow, was silent. Corinne was probably too afraid to interrupt us. And, being one of my Knights, she wouldn’t suggest anything and would follow the orders I gave her.

“Okay, I will,” I said, giving in and coming to a decision. “Shadow, Lion, prepare for dropping down. If anything goes awry, head outside of the mist’s range immediately!”

“Understood!” They both answered in unison, and we began preparing.

A moment later, the clamps at the mech’s shoulders disengaged, and the two heavy machines began their descent like anvils dropped from the top of a skyscraper. For a second, they began falling like dead weights, then the magic to slow them down activated, the formation coming alive along their bodies as their descent slowed to a manageable velocity. It looked like it wasn’t going to be dispelled. Good. I watched as they landed... However, I also noticed that it was a bit harder than expected, but still within parameters.

“Drop successful,” Kustov confirmed in the meantime. “They have touched down on target perimeter, no deviation.”

I nodded, watching the Imaginary with narrowed eyes. Now that they were down, dwarfed by the crater, I had an even better sense of scale, noting that the damage was indeed overwhelming.

“The magic down here seems to be working, but…” Father’s voice echoed on the bridge, “There is interference indeed. From where we stand, the ground had buckled outward in a radial pattern and… Hm…

“I think it is molten glass that lines sections of the crater’s rim.” Corinne added, “What remained of the monster's body is down below; it doesn’t look good; I’ll head a bit to the east to get a better look.” It didn’t take long for her to get to her place and continue reporting. “I would eat that… It is not only scorched meat, Sovereign, but it looks like it was turned into stone or something.”

“What wasn’t turned to ash was indeed transformed into a strange… something.” Dad agreed, “We will know more if we get closer to it.”

“Be careful! Also, ground units,” I said through the comm link. “Prepare for the jump. Pion, your team is next. Deploy when ready.”

“Understood.” Came the simple reply.

I watched as Pion and his soldiers jumped from the ship’s open bay as one unit. Their blood tattoos activated mid-air, slowing their descent until they landed in loose formation, cushioning the impact… but, once again, it seemed to be a bit harder than expected, some of them rolling multiple times to ease the weight of the impact. They touched down just behind the mechs, heading forward, remaining close in case something went very wrong.

And it did, but not because something survived the explosion. It didn’t take long for the first problem to show itself.

“Sovereign,” Pion’s voice came through the link, sounding surprisingly strained. It was as if he were in the middle of climbing a mountain with extra weight on his back. “We landed without incident, but... there’s an uncomfortable sensation in all of us. The blood tattoos... they’re reacting. And we’re all experiencing heavy nausea. It’s like a fever in the blood.”

“Pull out.” I clenched the armrest of my chair. “Fall back if needed.”

“Negative,” he replied firmly. “We can operate, Sovereign. The air is breathable for us, and the sensation stabilizes with enough mental focus. We are not impaired. Our training is good enough to keep working.”

“Copy that… Still, in an hour, I want your group to be out of there!” I didn’t like it, but I trusted Pion’s judgment. If he said they could proceed, then they could, but I was going to give them a strict frame to follow. “Begin scanning the area manually,” I ordered. “Collect data and watch the crater for movement. I want to know what happened to the beast’s core.”

“Will do!”

It didn’t take long for Kalash's voice to speak up again, steady as stone.

“We’re at the carcass now, or what remains of it. I am surprised there is anything to examine at all, to be honest with you. Anyway… The core is gone.”

“Define gone,” I spoke, because that could be anything. It could mean that it was turned into dust completely. Or…

“Chunks of it are everywhere,” Kalash said. “I can see varying-sized CC everywhere here... But more than half of it had to turn to dust. The amount that is here, son, is not enough for a core for the size of this beast!”

“Status of your mech systems?” I asked, playing with my beard, confirming that the mist around them was indeed CC dust. This also now shows us that while CC is a conductive necessity for spells, in this form, it does more harm than good. Our soldiers are not wizards, but with the monster's blood, they still feel sick. I can’t imagine what it does to a mage… but no wonder it is considered so deadly.

“Sluggish,” Corinne cut in, her voice making me refocus and keep my thoughts in the back of my head. “Our inputs are very much delayed. I tested it, and it also affects our targeting systems, which flicker when activated. It’s like the formations are lagging by a breath or more. I don’t feel like the ground troops; there is no nausea, but I do feel a bit lightheaded.”

“Probably because we sit higher than the mist,” Dad concluded quickly. “Still, it should be nothing major, but the Lion is dragging its limbs slightly. It makes me feel as if I were underwater. Especially where the mist is thicker, I can tell that it is… disruptive.”

“Report on wildlife, if any?” I asked, knowing there wouldn’t be any.

“No movement,” Pion responded nonetheless. “But we found corpses of beasts, and we can tell that they are not from the explosion. These creatures seem to have crawled out of the ground after it happened, only to die on the surface. Some had also exploded, probably their burning blood forcing them to split open. They do look… horrifically deformed.”

“You sound like you are feeling sorry for them.” Dad joked, making Pion grunt.

“Not at all, Lord Kalash. A moment… yes. We found more corpses, half-buried. They don’t look like the ones around the massive one. These look… simply dead.”

“Probably the mist killed them,” I murmured, more to myself. “This type of fallout is poisonous to anything with magic in their blood…” I concluded before I looked at the crew on the bridge, “Begin extended scans. Record all data into Merlin’s database for post-analysis, or else our Prime Minister will be cranky. When done,” I spoke to my Father and Pion, “Start evacuating the place. Leave before the hour is over; that is an order!”

“Understood!”

I heard confirmation from both places at once; the crew was working like their lives depended on it while on the ground. It may be the case, but I wasn’t sure. If this phenomenon weren’t isolated, then every future battle could risk becoming another crater like this.

“Can we somehow contain the mist, preventing it from going anywhere?” I asked, having little to no idea what to do. It was... dust. Splash water on it? But it was CC… would that even work?

“I do not have any idea, Sovereign,” Kustov replied, lowering his head.

“We could,” one of the officers stood up from his seat, saluting, continuing as I nodded encouragingly at him, “We could empty one of our water reserves and try to splash the mist.”

So he was thinking of the same thing I was.

“May not work,” I shrugged, but before he could feel ashamed, I raised a hand. “We will give it a shot! Lock onto the mechs and spray only a little at first. Father?”

“I heard it. We will, along with the soldiers, keep a close watch on the mist.”

Sure enough, when we did it, the results were what I expected. This was not ordinary dust; it didn’t get wet like it should; it kept floating there.

“Wait…” Pion suddenly spoke up, “Where the monster flesh is, it did react!”

When asked for details, they reported that they could see the water droplets float or crystallize weirdly, sticking to the monster’s body. CC is still CC… It had to react to the remaining magic in the monster’s body; at least, that was my theory. With a second try, we splashed some water down again while one of our soldiers activated his sword, creating an icy surface, the magical coldness aimed to affect the arriving ‘rain.’ Just then, the moment he did so, the mist reacted at once and, like a sudden whirlpool, got drawn to the spell, to his bone sword, and to anything that got touched by the ice.

“So it is drawn to magic,” I muttered to myself.

“It is sticking to it,” Pion reported. “Sovereign, the weapon became crystallized, like a monster core! It is… no longer functional.”

“Interesting…” I said, pulling on my beard, “Bring it back to study! Gather more samples! At least, knowing that it doesn’t stick to anything but magic, we won’t contaminate the ship or ourselves and bring it back that way…”

“That’s… lucky.” Kustov gulped, thinking about the possibility for the first time.

“Yeah… It is.” I let out a half-smile. “Now, I am curious… Will that crystallized thing be like actual CC… or something different?”